Am Samstag, 13. Januar 2007 09:58 schrieb Enrico Forestieri: > On Fri, Jan 12, 2007 at 05:55:20PM +0100, Georg Baum wrote: > > > Enrico Forestieri wrote: > > > > > as a parameter introducer. To tell you the truth, the cygwin version > > > of lyx that I make available for download is patched such that through > > > an env variable it is possible to use either posix or windows style > > > paths. > > > > Making a binary created from patched sources available is very bad IMO. > > Thanks for your opinion. So, you are saying that if I find that a patch > does something useful I should not share it with others.
I admit that my wording above was not really what I meant. Maybe I should have taken some more time to write that message. I have no problem at all with binaries from patched sources as long as it is clearly stated that the sources are patched, and where interested people can get the patch. What I don't like at all is making patched versions available without clearly stating that it is a patched version, because IMO users have a right to know what they use. This does not mean that patched versions are not useful, it is only a labelling issue. When Uwe distributed installers from patched sources labelled as "LyX 1.4.0" (IIRC) I wrote something similar. AFAIK we are talking about ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/bin/1.4.3/lyx-1.4.3-cygwin.tar.gz. If not, please correct me. That file sits on the official ftp server together with binaries from unpatched sources in one directory, and the file README.cygwin in that directory only explains that this package is unofficial, but not that it is patched. Therefore it is very difficult for users to find out that they are not running a vanilla version. > > Either this patch is for your personal convenience, then you should not > > make the binary available, or it is useful in general, then the patch > > should be included in the official version. > > I find this to be a somewhat hypocritical attitude, as I tried to have > accepted a similar patch but it was rejected. But maybe when you say > "useful in general" you mean that it must be useful for all platforms > an not for a particular one (which is not yours). No I don't mean that. I mean "useful for cygwin users in general". IIRC I was the only one besides you who had opinions on this patch. I stated two or three times already that I don't understand anymore what external_path currently does and that I don't care anymore whether it exists or not. Therefore this statement was not hypocritical at all, but meant seriously. IIRC Lars had some concerns about some #ifdef __CYGWIN__ in the code. I share these concerns and would not like to have them at all in the main code, but I am sure that this could be avoided by putting this stuff in the os namespace and using a well defined interface (with possible noop functions on other platforms). > > I don't know if the README in the package talks about the patch and where to > > get it, but if it does not then you are even breaking the GPL. > > Now you are going a bit above the lines (even for a Friday). > Please, find attached the patch in question. As you can see it does not > introduce changed behaviour or anything else. Perhaps I forgot to put it > on the wiki, and you could have suggested that I should do it, instead > of going through a hideous legalese. But I take it as a Friday statement. I admit that I was upset when I wrote the message, so I could have written that in a more friendlier way, but please note also that it was factually correct. Of course I know that it never was your intention to break the GPL, and that you would send the patch to anybody who asked for it. Unfortunately that is not enough: What is missing is a hint in the package itself where to get the patch (I just searched for such a hint, but did not find one). So can you please add it? Georg
